Stochastic Terrorism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism

Comments

iamnothereJan 25, 2026, 5:24 AM
This concept is sophistry when deployed against Democrats just as much as it was when deployed against Republicans.

“Stochastic terrorism” is free speech.

I get it, you don’t like your enemies and you want to find a way to punish them. Maybe even to prevent them from saying things that seem to be increasing their base of support. So you find a few dangerous whackos who also happened to articulate the same points that you’re trying to suppress. Boom, instant justification to suppress that speech! Even if the speech isn’t per se illegal, maybe the fact that both your target and the whackos said the same thing makes it ok to suppress that speech anyway!

No, that doesn’t make it ok. Free speech is free speech. Stop trying to unconstitutionally suppress the rights of your opponents.

PorterBHallJan 25, 2026, 6:08 AM
In the United States, stochastic terrorism is neither a statutory offense nor a term of art in criminal codes; it is an analytic label used in scholarship and practitioner writing to describe probabilistic risks of violence linked to rhetoric. Recent legal and critical surveys stress that usage is heterogeneous and contested, and that the concept's value lies in describing a structure of communication and harm rather than in supplying a justiciable element test.[7] By contrast, U.S. incitement law is anchored in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which protects advocacy short of speech that is intended to produce imminent lawless action and likely to do so. Stochastic accounts often concern non-directive, cumulative rhetoric whose effects materialize unpredictably, making the Brandenburg imminence and likelihood prongs difficult to satisfy absent clear exhortation.[2]
iamnothereJan 25, 2026, 1:40 PM
The goal of those pushing the “stochastic terrorism” scam has always been either outright criminalization of the speech or (at a minimum) public-private coordinated suppression of the speech. Don’t fall for it.
xtiansimonJan 25, 2026, 3:02 PM
> “Stochastic accounts often concern non-directive, cumulative rhetoric whose effects materialize unpredictably…”

And it would seem ever more rapidly.

I know I feel enervated by the videos I see from MN. More and more by at the speed of my scrolling.

And, video instances depict the behaviors of agents who, in the moment of encounter, are able to rapidly escalate situations.

I would argue the latter is agents learning tricks and shortcuts from other agents on how to dominate. The more unrestricted and unaccountable they are, the more individuals are emboldened to learn and strive for the approbation of their superiors. They have a quota.

rcbdevJan 25, 2026, 10:14 AM
What is up with this comment, is it bot-spam? What are the citations [7] and [2] supposed to be?
Etherlord87Jan 25, 2026, 1:34 PM
It's a quote from the submission (Wikipedia article).
timmmmmmayJan 25, 2026, 6:35 AM
the more you don't want somebody to be allowed to say something, the more stochastic it is
diamond559Jan 25, 2026, 3:53 AM
People are being shot in the face by masked gangs of brown shirts, while they are on the ground after trying to administer aid, we're beyond "stochastic" terrorism at this point.
amadeuspagelJan 25, 2026, 5:15 PM
If someone actually took this idea seriously, they would have to start with data about terrorism and then ask what speech might have inspired them, and they would end up banning pretty much all political expression. The Wikipedia article on Terrorism in the United States lists Attacks by Type[1], two of the types are left-wing and anti-government extremism and right-wing and anti-government extremism. That about covers all political speech.

But for people who refer to this idea, the starting point is always that they want to censor specific speech, and they look for acts of terror to justify that.

There's no advocate for censorship that couldn't make up their own "stochastic something", and I'm sure many have, I'm sure people have argued that porn is stochastic rape or something.

Anyone who has ever advocated for censorship has argued that the speech he wants to censor leads to violence and social breakdown. Do people who consider "stochastic terrorism" a serious concept see themselves in this tradition, just expressing themselves more formally or do they think they've invented something new here?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...

cratermoonJan 25, 2026, 6:14 PM
From Hannah Arendt's book The Origins of Totalitarianism, first published 1948. She identified what we now call stochastic terrorism but did not give it a name.

Mostly such orders were "intentionally vague, and given in the expectation that their recipient would recognize the intent of the order giver, and act accordingly", for the elite formations were by no means merely obligated to obey the order of the Fuehrer (this was mandatory for all existing organizations anyway), but "to execute the will of the leadership". And, as can be gathered from the lengthy proceedings concerning "excesses" before the party courts, this was by no means one and the same. The only difference was the the elite formations, thanks to their special indoctrination for such purposes, had been trained to understand that certain "hints mean more than their mere verbal contents" -- Arendt, Hannah. 2025. Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism Expanded Edition (LOA #389). Edited by Jerome Kohn and Thomas Wild. New York, NY: Library of America. (588-89)

ares623Jan 25, 2026, 2:03 AM
Sometimes it's good to put a name on a nebulous "thing" that we know permeates us.
rixtoxJan 25, 2026, 4:50 PM
“Stand Alone Complex”
rcbdevJan 25, 2026, 10:15 AM
This the most hokus pokus pseudo-sciency thing I've read on HN in a while.
phendrenad2Jan 25, 2026, 3:20 AM
[flagged]
phendrenad2Jan 25, 2026, 4:48 AM
Downvotes really should be public, it would make HN a much more civil place.
direwolf20Jan 25, 2026, 1:45 PM
Not needed in this case. Grokipedia is a heavily manipulated AI slopaganda outlet.
poloticsJan 25, 2026, 12:11 PM
this would be indeed super-interesting I wish @dang sees this. maybe only allow users with a certain (1000+ ?) karma to see who downvoted them maybe, to avoid second order effects?
tomhowJan 25, 2026, 12:34 PM
This has been discussed plenty over the years and the reason for not doing it is that it would encourage meta-discussion (argument/debate) about downvotes, when what we really want is for all the forces and incentives to keep discussions focused on the primary topic.